Family

It’s almost eleven months since the accident and I am aware that we have not posted anything regarding Anthea’s progress for some time.

The good news is that there is continued progress. She has just returned from cooking for 130 young people at a summer camp. which she greatly enjoyed. She is still having continued physio and though the rate of progress is obviously decreasing, she still continues to improve and is re-assured that the physios think there is more to come.

Tomorrow we are off to meet the air ambulance team who assisted her transit to hospital on the day of the accident. I think she feels it is important that she fills in the gaps of what she cannot recall. We are then off for some holiday and she is talking about doing some cycling and some walking.

Yesterday we got in late to discover that, lesley Farrall, the Diocesan Secretary, who is also a good friend, learnt that her son Mark who is of student age was badly injured in an accident after being hit by a bus in Bristol town centre. This was obviously a terrible shock for Lesley and her husband Andy and my trip to the ITU at the Bristol Royal Infirmary brought some poignant memories flooding back.

The news of Mark today is encouraging, but there is still a way to go in discovering whether he has a significant brain injury.

Please do continue to pray for us, but also remember Mark, Lesley and Andy in your prayers. We are still overwhelmed by the support we received and can testify to the fact that it has made such a difference. May it be so for the Farrall family at this testing time

I was struck by the story of the eleven year old Mexican boy who is going to university. Clearly this lad is a paleontology prodigy but how does this decision honour his childhood? I was relieved to learn that his mother had decided that he continue at school with children of his own age to help with his social development. However, this story does seem to accord with a broader trend you can observe in British culture of children growing up too fast.

On the illicit and clearly shocking side of this trend is the prevalence of guns and knives amongst teenage gangs and the use by schoolkids of mobile phones for amateur teenage porn. On the more subtle side is the way advertising and marketing is increasingly targeting children to groom the next generation of consumers.

At the centre of this is the sexualisation of childhood, particularly girls. A report by Compass entitled The Commercialisation of Childhood outlines this phenomenon with alarming clarity: lacy lingerie, for example, is marketed to under 10 year olds. I can think of an advert promoting a doll for girls which was highly sexualised. This is just one of the impacts of this trend. Others are equally worrying. What’s more, I fear we are yet to reap the full consequences of the commercialisation of kids.

One final thing I’d like to highlight is the huge pressure that is put on parents to spend by their children as a result. Given that so many parents are in debt anyway, encouraged by consumerism themselves, this can only lead to more stress. It’s a vicious and downward spiral.